


Yield

by TheSummoningDark



Category: Dishonored (Video Game)
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Low Chaos (Dishonored), Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-04
Updated: 2013-12-04
Packaged: 2018-01-03 12:22:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 701
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1070420
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheSummoningDark/pseuds/TheSummoningDark
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Corvo Attano is not a broken man.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Yield

Corvo Attano is not a broken man.

He may be alone in thinking this, Samuel knows. He's heard what the others whisper, the hushed conversations in corners of the Hound Pits' taproom when Corvo is sleeping the sleep of the dead after one mission or another; that no-one could survive such an ordeal intact, that there's nothing left for him now but vengeance. That there is nothing left of the man the Lord Protector used to be.

Perhaps it's not an unfair conclusion to come to. They've all seen the scars Corvo bears, how haggard and gaunt he is from six months of imprisonment and torture in Coldridge Prison. And perhaps, he thinks- they see what they know _they_ would be after that, and they cannot believe that anyone could possibly come through that without losing everything that they are. It's not unfair. Men have lost less and been broken by it, and Corvo...Corvo has had _everything_ ripped from his hands. Not a week ago he was a tortured captive, believed a traitor, facing his own execution. Havelock and Pendleton know this, and they see his scars, and they think they know what they're looking at.

But they haven't seen what only Samuel sees. They haven't seen the way Emily-

(Emily, who saw him fail to protect her mother and still looks at him with the sun in her eyes, and part of him wants to ask if the rumours are true but he knows he never will) 

-clung to him as though afraid he would vanish if she let go; the way he had curled protectively around her, offering his own back to the cruel and chaotic world around them. They haven't seen the quiet moment on the approach to the dock behind the Hound Pits when he removes the mask and takes a deep breath of unfiltered air, and looks tired, yes, but calm. They haven't seen him materialise out of the shadows behind the Abbey with a light in his eyes and not a single drop of blood on his blade.

Eyes are always drawn to the scar when Corvo's mask comes off, the still livid half-healed burn under his eye. Then to the gauntness of his face, the bruise-like shadows that tell of too many sleepless nights. But they don't see the whole. They don't see that beneath the mask - and the gauntness and grime and scarring is as much a mask as that ghastly skull - Corvo Attano _burns_ with something deeper and brighter and infinitely more dangerous than vengeance. With _purpose_. Corvo is exactly who he always was. But tempered.

It reminds him of something Piero said once, rambling animatedly to an audience of zero about one of his many projects. Metal, Piero had said, will yield when you force it, true enough. But one it's yielded it's stronger, and you can't force it any further unless you're willing to destroy it completely.

Corvo Attano is not a broken man. And perhaps, Samuel thinks as his knuckles whiten uncertainly around the vial of poison, Havelock and the others have finally come to understand this. A broken man can be put back together however those who do the rebuilding find necessary. A broken man, in all his sharp edges and dangerous fragility, is _useful_. He is a tool and nothing more. To be used however men wiser, men more _whole_ please.

They see themselves so close to ruling an empire. And at last they also begin to see that Corvo will never let it happen. And if they can't force him any further, can't bend him to their will, their only recourse is to destroy him.

Or try to, anyway.

Samuel pours a judicious portion of the poison into the glass and, before he can second-guess himself, pours the rest out onto the floor. It leaves a dark stain on the floorboards alongside generations of other stains from spilled beer and river-mud encrusted boots. As he watches the stain soak into the worn wood, Samuel feels a strange calm settle over him. He's chosen his side. He's made his choice.

Corvo Attano is not a broken man.

Samuel refuses to be the one who breaks him.


End file.
